How Chicago money helped Oscar-winning 'Icarus' expose Russian doping

Chicagoans Steve Cohen and Paula Froehle, co-founders of the Chicago Media Project, were instructed to be on a certain street corner in Santa Monica, Calif. Met there at the predesignated time, Cohen and Froehle were led to a nondescript building, which turned out to be a dentist’s office.

With talk of burner phones and encrypted emails and texts, it played like a scene straight out of a spy novel rather than a prelude to an award-winning sports documentary scoring critical funding.

“We went up the stairs into this room that was completely covered in black curtains, where we watched a very early cut of the movie,” Cohen recalled Monday. “Afterward, Paula and I looked at each other and said we were very glad we got to see it but very concerned that somebody was following us here because this was the sort of movie that was going to shake the world.”

The movie, Bryan Fogel’s “Icarus,” now streaming on Netflix, won the Academy Award on Sunday for best documentary.

What Cohen and Froehle did not know at the clandestine screening was that Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov — the Orwell-quoting one-time head of Russia’s supposed anti-doping effort who becomes the film’s de facto star in exposing how Vladimir Putin’s state-run sports program exploited and avoided detection for performance-enhancing drugs — would go into hiding before filming completed.

That life-or-death gravity gives “Icarus,” which started off as one kind of story but becomes another, the feel of an espionage thriller so the fact that its revelations about Russian chicanery becoming common knowledge is not critical to its appeal.

“We had a sense of the magnitude of what the story was about,” Cohen said. “What we didn’t know until it was completed was how compelling the story was going to be and how it was going to really grab the viewer in a way that would make it much more impactful.”

Audiences at the Sundance Film Festival in early 2017 were wowed. Netflix bought the film for a reported $5 million and has been streaming it since August, and now it’s an Oscar winner, perhaps buoyed by suspicions in the zeitgeist that extend well beyond sports.

"We dedicate this award to Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov, our fearless whistleblower who now lives in grave danger,” Fogel said while accepting his statuette from “Lady Bird” director Greta Gerwig after his film’s victory was announced by actress Laura Dern.

“We hope ‘Icarus’ is a wake-up call, yes, about Russia, but more than that about the importance of telling the truth — now more than ever."

The Chicago Media Project helps fund about a dozen documentaries a year, roughly half through a nonprofit arm. The others are funded through a for-profit fund that enables investors to recoup money (or lose it) through an equity stake.

“Icarus” is one of the for-profit investments that yielded a return. Three of its co-executive producers — Ken Pelletier, Ken Nolan and the Lagralane Group — have ties to the Chicago Media Project. And now it’s the Chicago organization’s first Academy Award winner.

Froehle said the group’s investment was “significant, a third maybe of the financing of the film,” as reflected in the fact that Chicago Media Project’s on-screen credit comes in the documentary’s first minute after Netflix, Impact Partners and Diamond Docs, ahead of Alex Productions.

Originally, Fogel had set out in his first documentary to use steroids himself and conceal it while competing in a semipro bicycle race to show how ineffective testing is, a steroidal version of Morgan Spurlock’s “Super Size Me.”

What he wound up is closer to “Citizenfour,” Laura Poitras’ Oscar-winning documentary on Edward Snowden, who fled the United States after leaking espionage secrets.

In seeking an expert to help him, Fogel winds up connected to Rodchenkov, who is stunningly candid. Their relationship and the film veer off as the Russian doping program draws scrutiny and officials start dropping dead. Soon Fogel becomes a literal lifeline for Rodchenkov but gains incredible access as the scientist meets with lawyers, the press and others.

The film doesn’t exactly have a happy ending, but neither does Rodchenkov. Among his entanglements is a multimillion-dollar defamation suit filed last month by now-retired Russian biathletes who were stripped of silver medals, backed by Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov.

“One thing that’s really important is there’s a legal defense fund to help fund what it’s basically taking to keep Grigory alive,” Froehle said. “In everything Grigory has done in order to help us know what was going on, there’s legal support behind that.”

The Chicago Media Project, through its nonprofit side, has set up a legal defense fund for Rodchenkov. Froehl said a link can be found at the top of chicagomediaproject.org website “if people are truly moved by the story of the film and want to support the idea of whistleblowers and of telling the truth in the face of grave danger.”

Sound changes: CBS and TBS on Monday announced their assignments for the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. Among the additions are Lisa Byington and Candace Parker.

Byington, who in September became the Big Ten Network’s first female play-by-play football announcer, will team with Brian Anderson and Chris Webber through the regional finals. Parker, a former star with Naperville Central, Tennessee and the WNBA’s Los Angeles Sparks, is to be an Atlanta-based studio analyst through the first weekend.

For what it’s worth, seven of the eight tournament announcing teams include women.

Meet the new boss: Jimmy Pitaro was named Monday as the new president of ESPN, replacing John Skipper, who resigned abruptly in December.

Previously head of consumer products and interactive media for parent Walt Disney Co., Pitaro will report to Disney Chairman and CEO Bob Iger.